NOCTURNAL ANIMALS is Tom Ford’s lush, tense, thriller wrapped in a melodrama.
Amy Adams is Susan, described by her ex as a nocturnal animal, sporting a Veronica Lake hair style that’s a visual delight,an inspired aesthetic nimbly signifying the noirish nuance of the nocturnal animal tale.
In one of the year’s most startling starts, the opening titles feature obscenely obese elephantine females flaunting their fat – prolapsed tummies flap in their laps, thighs of thunder threaten to drape knees in curtains of adipose, a gross flesh fetish that glories in the gross, the gluttonous and the unglamorous.
It’s an art show installation, taking Rubenesque to gargantuan extreme.
After this enormous entrance, the narrative pares down to a lean telling of two stories intertwined by reality and imagination, fact and fiction.
Amy Adam’s Susan, currently married to the adulterous Adonis, Hutton Morrow, was once married to Edward Sheffield, a fledgling novelist. Edward has finished a novel and has sent her the manuscript to read. This facilitates in the threading of three stories through the film – current real time, the story unfolding as she reads, and flashback of her life with Edward as his narrative triggers memories of that time.
Back in their early romance, Susan says Edward is a great writer because he had already created a fictional character in her. It’s a poignant, pertinent and prescient line that permeates the entire picture.
Contemporary art world colleague Carlos confides to Susan that their world is more palatable than the real world, and the genius of Tom Ford’s film is the juxtaposition of the real and imagined world and how contingent and informed one plays on the other.
As with his debut feature film, A Single Man, Tom Ford shows style and substance in spades, exquisite art direction, beautiful clothes, glamorous redheads, classic cars, and distinctive architecture.
And what a cast! Accompanying the aforementioned Amy Adams,
Jake Gyllenhaal, Isla Fisher, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Laura Linney – the we become our mothers scene alone is worth the price of admission – and the two Michaels’- Shannon and Sheen, shine, the latter in a shimmering cameo as Carlos, the gay artist in a heterosexual marriage (I’m the only woman in his life brags his wife. He loves me and that will outlive lust), the former as a law enforcement officer who seeks righteous justice.
A lush, classic movie score from Abel Korzeniowski will have you swooning, as will costume designer Arianne Phillips wonderful wardrobe and Seamus McGarvey’s sumptuous cinematography.
How great it is to see an American filmmaker making movies for grown ups, films that have both glamour and gravitas.